


you need me (rest easy)

by lifeisdeeply



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Heavy Angst, Hurt Lance (Voltron), M/M, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, but they are all idiots, everyone blames each other, or so it seems...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-10-26 10:26:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeisdeeply/pseuds/lifeisdeeply
Summary: A mission gone wrong. A paladin down. A teammate seeminly gone.The members of Team Voltron gain an awful lot by losing everything.





	1. Chapter 1

The worst type of bad news is the stuff you can see coming.

It’s feeling in your gut, knowing with everything you have, that things won’t work out. Despite what people are telling you, knowing in your core that they are wrong. And no matter how much you fight, or persevere, or think for a second that this time will be different, nothing will change. It’s knowing for a fact that there is no room for hope because terrible things will happen. Or have happened. Or will continue to happen.

Standing on the Castle’s bridge, staring at the eyes of his teammates, Keith feels that stone settle on his chest – weighing him to the spot even though a rush of adrenaline screams at him to _run_. His ears ring with the news they had all just received.

“We need one of you to identify a body.”

It was the Captain of the Royal Guard of planet _Aquitotal _that broke this news to them. His large, pink, scaly-looking humanoid form lit up the communication screen on the bridge, face pulled into a tight expression of professional remorse. If he had been in the Castle to deliver this news, Keith knew he would have punched him.

However, Keith knew something like this had been coming. After all, it had been almost a week since Lance had disappeared. 

There had been a distress beacon from _Aquitotal, _a planet that was essentially just one big fuck-off orb of water. After talks with the Royal Guard, on the only piece of land that was not submerged in the red-tinted oceans, they decided it best for Team Blue to fair the waters for what had seemed like a less distressing need for Voltron and more of a diplomatic aid against two warring tribes. The mission seemed treacherous enough to warrant only the aquatic capabilities of the Blue Lion to approach the underwater civilisation, but not the need for any other members to join Lance in the quest to charm his way to establishing peace.

“All will be taken care of,” Allura had assured the King who had pleaded to just want peace on his planet, “we are sending our most tactful warrior to help smooth these issues you are having.” Keith cringed at the memory. That line had only been a ploy to convince Lance he should go alone, after he had very loudly complained it had been a bad idea. It very quickly won him over; being praised so highly by the princess. They had all laughed after, saying how well she had persuaded him, none of them thinking the mission was of very much importance since learning it was all internal conflict. Pidge and Hunk had wanted to go back to finishing off upgrades for Yellow’s thrusters. Shiro and Allura were in the middle of discussing battle tactics when they had been called, so were also eager to get back to the castle. Hell, even Keith thought it wasn’t worth his time.

Idiots.

They’d all been _fucking _idiots.

Not even a varga after they’d retired to the castle, stationed on a nearby moon due to the fact there was not enough land for it to safely set down on _Aquitotal, _they’d received word of the Blue Lion’s status.

Wrecked. Unresponsive. But worst of all, without her Paladin.

Now, after a week of tirelessly searching both the deep murk of the planet’s underground civilisation and recent Galra transmissions in case the purple pricks had been behind it, they received the shattering news that Keith knew was coming yet thought was too awful to happen.

Again.

And again. In his experience.

But the air is sucked out of him like it’s the first time he’s had a rug pulled out from under him. It feels like fucking poison in his lungs when he hears the word ‘body’, even though it’s all he’s been chanting in his head after every dead end on their search. It takes a solid minute for him to come to his senses, and only then is he pulled from his reverie by Shiro’s hand clamping around his bicep – tugging slightly as if he were scared Keith wouldn’t be there if he didn’t stop him. And maybe that’s true. Because the air on the bridge feels fucking unbearable. Because he can’t stand the fact the universe has allowed things to fall apart in such an impossibly awful way.

Because he’d just been told that Lance wasn’t breathing anymore.

He was a _body_. A corpse.

Keith could see Hunk throwing up to his right and had the rising urge to follow suit.

“I see…Thank you, Captain. We shall be down…shortly,” came Coran’s eventual reply, after seeing no one else make a move to. The older Altean looked ashen as he moved to comfort Allura – who was visibly shaking for the loss they had all yet to fully comprehend. Pidge was quiet, knees to the floor, as if the new weight of the situation had proven too much and she was forced to do nothing else but submit with her head in her hands. Keith turned to where Shiro was still holding him and saw the expression of a leader who had lost one of his own, haunted by that of someone who had just lost a part of themselves. And really, they all had.

If this really was Lance that had been found, then their right leg had been ripped off. Not just in Voltron, but for each of its members. Someone they needed; like a leg to walk with; to lean on and lift them up; to _function _normally.

Gone.

Taken from them.

Tears slip from his eyes before he has time to harden his walls. Shiro clocks it and tugs him in closer for a hug; where Keith can do nothing but just let go. A sob rips violently from him, guarded safely in the arms of his oldest friend. Frustrated and pulled taught, he feels like he’s an elastic band that’s finally snapped after being toyed with for his whole life. Quiet rings in his mind. A mind that’s normally so loud; always on the defence; always ready for the next fight; already rubbing dirt in the wounds and ready to keep going. Now only silent. So quiet that Keith can hear the static in his ears that makes him feel scrambled and wrong.

He realises that there is nothing left in him.

Because if this really is Lance (and life’s been cruel enough for him to know better than to hope it’s not) then he knows it’s the end for him too.

* * *

They decide to go together. As a team.

As a family.

Taking only the Black Lion, they reach the small patch of land in mere minutes.

(However, if asked, any of the members of Voltron wouldn’t have been able to say how long it took. Just that they all felt aged and weary by the time they were planet-side.)

Keith steps out of the hatch last, feeling the breeze hit his exposed face immediately. His hair whips continuously from every direction, looking overly active against his pale and expressionless face. He can see the horizon on every direction, the pale-yellow sun setting against the rusty looking water. It feels too bright and dazzling to look at, so he turns his attention to where Shiro is having words with the Captain some way in front. He can’t make out the hushed tones over the wailing winds from where he stands, and he finds he doesn’t need to, as Shiro nods and turns back to the group with his jaw set and gaze firm. He knows what Shiro’s going to say.

“You all stay here; I’ll go with the Captain to identify…him. There’s no need for us all to go.”

The uproar is immediate; each of them rebutting this to the point that Keith swears he hears someone snarl. It might’ve been himself, but he’s pretty sure it was Pidge. In the end it was Hunk that silenced them all.

“I am going to see him. He’s my best friend, Shiro. You don’t get to decide this for me. Or for any of us.” Hunk’s voice is firm but tight, the strain of holding back his grief being nearly too much to endure. Shiro doesn’t give up so easily.

“Hunk, there are some things you’ll never be able to un-see. Especially in war…you’ve already went through so much,” he steps forward to put his human hand on Hunks shoulder, “I just want to protect you all from this one.” Hunk shrugs him off furiously.

“Like you protected Lance?” He spits venomously. Shiro gasps, wounded. No one goes to defend him as Hunk continues. “You’ve failed him, Shiro. We _all _failed him. He didn’t want to go on his own, and what did we do? Convince him to do it anyway! I didn’t even listen to him. And now he’s lying dead on this _fucking _planet, hundreds of _millions _of miles away from home, because none of us listened. We could have stopped this…but we just let him go…into unknown hostile territory.” He exhales with a shaky, borderline delirious laugh. “Lance didn’t get the luxury of being protected. He got dragged into a war we aren’t even a supposed to be a part of and… and he was completely alone. All because none of us cared enough to think about what we were sending him to do.” He takes a breath and backs off, realising he had gotten up in Shiro’s face. “I am going to see him because I need to tell him…he needs to know how…sorry I am. I can’t believe this...until I see…I let this happen and I just…I need to see him.” He tapers off his sentence with a sob, hand coming up to his mouth to stifle it. Allura rubs soothing circles to his back. Keith looks to Pidge, who returns his gaze through teary eyes, and nods.

They are all going to see him.

That’s final.

* * *

The room is well lit.

Too bright, Keith thinks as he steps into it last, lagging behind the group again.

Its overbearing to his senses; the light, the noise, the desperation he feels radiating from his teammates.

They rushed in ahead, the oddly sterile looking building they had been directed to only being a few paces from where they landed. Upon entering, Keith felt bile rising in his throat at the familiarity of the place. Clean and pristine. Gag-inducingly sterile. Like the ward his dad had been in…

Keith’s snapped back to reality like a harsh slap to the face.

He’s painfully aware when he scans the body laid in front of him. The bruises. The cuts. The half-lidded eyes. The pallor of skin. Keith sees it all, up close, with a clarity that he knows will never fade no matter how far he travels from this moment. It will stay with him, he knows, in all its agonising detail. For as long as he lives.

A quick glance around the group tells him he is not alone with this thought.

On the table in front of them, covered from his waist down by a blanket, is undeniably their Blue Paladin. Under the layers of wounds, most notably a large gash running cruelly from one side of his neck to the other, he’s instantly recognisable.

They crumble like a domino effect.

Agony.

Pure and raw.

Ripped from all their hearts, the remaining members of Voltron break together. 

* * *

He blurs in and out of the next few varga, but Keith is aware that they stay in the room with Lance for a while. Holding his hand, stroking his hair. Whispering apologies that were irrefutably too late and too useless now.

They decide to leave only when the sun starts to rise again over the rusty sea, which Keith can see through the window that he’s been staring out at for a while. It’s only when Shiro shakes him slightly that he sees the others rising and readying to leave. Coran tells them he will stay to make preparations for Lance to return to the Castle, where they can decide how to properly set him to rest. Keith’s heart hurts when he says he’ll stay too, knowing he doesn’t need to look at Lance’s frozen expression any longer, but not being able to leave just yet.

After assuring Shiro that he’s fine, the others leave. Coran gives him one last look, hesitant before going on with his task of finding suitable transport. He stops in the doorway.

“Make your peace, son. It’s very easy to get lost here – in this. I know you want to hold on to your memories of him, but this,” his eyes scan down to the table, “will only tarnish them more. You and I both know he wouldn’t want you to stand here forever.” His voice is tired, as if this is the hundredth time he’s had to give the same advice. _Maybe he has_, Keith thinks. Maybe the older man of a lost world knows a thing or two about dealing with grief.

The door shuts behind Coran as he leaves.

He’s alone now.

With Lance.

For a moment he contemplates leaving as well, but his feet pull him towards the table and he’s powerless to do anything else. He focuses on the stillness of Lance’s chest and feels the aching rising anew in his. The pressure is back, hot and tight in his throat, and he feels like he’ll rip himself apart the more he tries to choke it down. He needs to get out of here. Because the more time he spends staring, the more pieces his heart shatters into.

But he can’t leave, he can’t look away. It’s a need deep in his soul – to keep looking, to stay with Lance and never leave his side because…

Because of the only reason that makes people sit in sterile rooms till their hearts can’t break any more.

For _love_.

It’s not a shocking realisation, more like the absentminded sting of hitting your head off a rock for the hundredth time. Numb but there, through the layers of hurt and turmoil. What really makes his head spin is realising, with a nauseating credence, that this is the last time he’ll be able to tell it to Lance. Tell him everything he hopefully already knew.

He feels hot and cold and crazy at once, as he sucks in a shuddering breath and places a hand on Lance’s chest above his heart.

He’s transported to when he’d last touched Lance there. Months ago. The first time they…

But there’s no heat to be felt beneath his fingertips this time. There’s no excitement or smiles or looks of longing. Now Lance’s half lidded eyes capture nothing. He doesn’t see Keith. He won’t see him ever again.

Keith squeezes his own eyes shut and lets his other hand intertwine with Lance’s limp one.

“I never told you…everything I should have…there was plenty of times I was going to, but I was too _chickenshit _and now you won’t get to hear how much I…” he sucks in a breath and lets the tears flow down his face, “how much I adore you, Lance. I am so in love with you…for…the longest time I…I need you. I can’t believe…I have to spend the rest of my life without you…it’s…I just can’t do it, Lance, please…don’t make me do this without you…_fuck_…I’m just so…sorry.”

He knows that he says more, but it doesn’t feel like its enough. He feels like he could spill all the things he’s been holding close to his heart for the rest of time in this _god-awful _room.

But it would never be enough.

Confessing to the dead is like clinging to the shadows.

_Useless_.

* * *

....

At the bottom of an unfamiliar ocean.

Bloody and bruised and completely alone.

Lance opens his eyes and recalls, with a subdued fear, what happened.

_Yeah_, he thinks, _definitely saw this coming_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team struggle with their grief while trying to piece together how everything fell apart.

_“Have you ever been in love?” _

_The question felt like a jolt of electricity down Keith’s spine, shocking him out of his reverie and looking to his side to the boy who asked it._

_Lance wasn’t looking at him, just peacefully looking up at the stars from the observation deck they sat on. He looked calm but slightly longing, like he usually did when stargazing. It was like he was physically there on the castle but somewhere else entirely in his mind. Homesickness, Keith usually boiled it down to. But somehow that felt too vague a word this time to describe the unhappy bend of his smile or weariness in his eyes. Sick for something, he noted._

_“I’m, uh, I don’t think so,” Keith admitted, caught off guard at the question. Lance looked down at his own hands curled in his lap, then slowly dragged his gaze up to look in Keith’s direction. Hesitant. Scared maybe. Keith didn’t know._

_“How close have you got?”_

_“To being in love?” He questioned. Lance nodded. “Honestly? As far as romantic relationships have gone for me, I’ve never made it passed the two-week mark.” Keith didn’t feel ashamed about admitting this, he’d lost far greater things in his time than potential dates. _

_Lance seemed to ponder Keith’s words, looking back to the floor and shifting slightly in his huddled position. Sensing that the conversation wasn’t going to continue on its own, Keith continued, “…well…there was this one guy in school.” Lance, although slightly shocked at the admission, waited for him to continue. “We were just…friends. He seemed to care, really genuinely care about me. Asked me if my new foster parents were treating me right, stood up for me when people were giving me shit…he was too good for me. Too good for our shithole of a school as well; parents carted him off to a private place a couple years before we graduated. I didn’t hear from him again.” It wasn’t hard to admit, his past crush being something he rarely thought about these days. Completely moved on from, what with the intergalactic war, and constant peril…and the idiot of a boy sitting next to him._

_Keith would’ve had to be a complete idiot to miss how things had been building between them. For months there had been…a tension. In every lingering look, longing touch. In every bit of casual banter, they were now charged by…something. Keith couldn’t quite explain it yet, too inexperienced in relationships and too preoccupied with the war to really put to words the way his heart felt like it worked all too hard and fast when Lance smiled. Or laughed. Or looked at him. _

_“You were good enough for him,” Lance said, captivated by the expanse of stars reflected in Keith’s eyes. It was an intense gaze, like he was trying to look into Keith’s mind and put the statement there himself. It made him huff a small laugh in return._

_“You don’t know that Lance, you don’t even know who he is.” But Lance didn’t look fazed, only now sympathy had wound its way into the crease of his eyes and tilt of his head._

_“No…but I know you. There’s no one on Earth or any other planet, in all the galaxies in the universe, that wouldn’t be…so lucky to have you love them.” The words were so sincere that Keith could feel his face begin to flush. Lance seemed to notice, and suddenly he too was bashful at his words, face close enough to Keith’s own that he could feel the warmth radiating from it._

_Everything slowed down._

_The universe kept turning, Keith knew it had to have kept turning, but at that moment nothing moved at all. There was nothing; no stars, no galaxies, no wars. No room for what the past had put them through, or all the struggles that lay ahead. _

_Only the glistening blue eyes of the boy in front of him._

_Lance._

_Blushing from his ears to his neck, glancing from Keith’s eyes to his lips, swaying closer but staying back as if unsure. _

_There was nothing else to do but close the gap and kiss him on his stupid, sweet mouth. _

_Nothing else that Keith wanted to do. _

_And god, he wanted._

_It was tender and new, both of them bold yet shy. They relaxed into each other, melting as if all the tension that had been between them finally dissipated in this one moment. As if this is what the universe had written in its stars from the start. Destined to fumble and pine and end up right here, kissing as if the sun rises and sets in the curve of the other’s mouth. They part and let their foreheads touch, eyes closed, Lance giggling slightly. _

_“Have you? Ever been in love that is,” Keith says, rather clumsily, once he catches his breath. He chalks it up to the way his head feels like rattled jelly._

_“I plan to be.” Lance answers it with a smirk, and Keith feels his stomach flip where he sits. _

_If loving Lance was what the future held, then he_ _had never been so excited to fall. _

* * *

The cacophony of silence is overwhelming.

The Castle, normally so loud, stagnant as each of its residents aimlessly find themselves in the recreation room after returning. A place that’s normally so…_alive _with activity. Now deafening.

_Haunting_.

Hours passed without anyone really noticing.

“Why…why did we think it’d be okay to send him there alone?”

Hunk asks the question from the edge of the couch, perched as if this was the last place he wanted to be. Unlike everything else he’s said since Lance went missing, there was no fire behind it. No guilt or accusing tone.

Only despair.

And confusion.

“We thought _Aquitotal _was a peaceful planet,” Allura starts to answer, “even at war, the tribes were never violent. They would shut off contact with their enemies rather than try to dominate them…their culture forbids them to damage or take life at any cost, or at least it was when Altea knew of them. I thought a bit of…smooth talking…would be enough to pacify whatever tiff had occurred between them. But they’ve clearly changed their ways and I,” her voice grows shaky and small, fit for a sheep that had just shown its back to the wolves, “…I was wrong.”

“Yeah no shit,” Pidge replies hotly, looking up abruptly from where her head was resting on her knees.

“Pidge,” Shiro chastises, “this isn’t the time to be picking fights with each other. We were all in agreement that Lance could handle it.”

“Yeah only because she gave us faulty information about the asshole lizard people being peaceful. How could any of us know what we were sending him into, when you didn’t even have a fucking clue yourself?” She winds herself up like a coil, getting more and more bitter as she speaks. “In fact, how are we supposed to know what you’re getting any of us into? We’ve all just been going along with what you’re telling us, princess. Clearly, it’s just been pure luck we survived this long. How do you expect any of us to trust you after this?”

“I just thought that maybe they would still be a peaceful civilisation” - she’s cut off abruptly.

“That’s the problem Allura, you didn’t know for sure and you sent him off anyway. Well next time you make a gamble on _‘maybe’, _make it with your own neck on the line.”

She stops when she realises what she’s said, eyes wide.

“That’s enough, Katie!”

But Shiro’s words fall upon deaf ears as Pidge bolts. Hunk goes to follow.

The room is left feeling cold in a way that hurts to breathe. Jagged and crooked. The ship feels off its axis as it sits, still poised on the moon of the planet that caused all this trouble. Wrong and tilted. _Like everything these days_.

“She has a point.” Keith says eventually, after the quiet of the room becomes unbearable. Allura looks struck anew. Shiro gives him a warning look, although one not half as sharp as he had given Pidge. “No…I don’t mean…this isn’t just your fault, Allura. None of us thought enough about what we were sending him into. But I just…think we need to know…what really happened. Clearly these people aren’t who you thought they were, but we’re still listening to them. I don’t trust that Captain. And I don’t believe the bullshit story that he just came across Lance in the water. We had been searching non-stop for almost a week.” It made no sense. They were told that Lance had just been caught in the cross fire of an ugly battle. But he had been _targeted_. Pulled from his lion and…

Captured. Beaten.

_Murdered_.

“You’re right,” Shiro breathes out heavily, “I think we need to do some investigating of our own. We need to know what really happened to him.”

They were going to get to the bottom of it.

No matter what.

* * *

(One Week Ago)

_Smack! _

“Why are you doing this?”

_Thump!_

“Stop, I’m not here to fight!”

_Crack!_

…And that was his nose broken.

Lance decided then that it would be in his best interest to shut the fuck up.

The afternoon had been nothing short of a disaster, but feeling the blood run from his newly broken nose it seemed like it could get worse before it got better. He’d only been on this godawful planet for what must’ve been a few varga, but the pounding in his head made it feel like millennia. Lance thought back, with a sharp clarity, how he had been yanked out of Blue; her right eye smashed in and then boarded by the scaly shits before he could react. He was smacked roughly upside the head with some sort of weapon and then…nothing.

Now he was tethered to a pole, in a cave at the bottom the red-tinted ocean of _Aquitotal_, being beaten senseless by a pale-yellow scaly native. _Wonderful_.

He took a breath.

_No need to panic_, _come on Lancey, take stock of the situation_.

Armour? Gone, he was left in his black under-armour and a bubble-helmet similar to the one’s Queen Luxia had given him and Hunk on the mermaid planet. Clearly resistant to battery.

Injuries? Possible concussion, broken nose, general ache but nothing severe.

Blue? He reached out for her in his mind but came up against a wall, void of her usual constant warmth. _She’s damaged_, he reminds himself, _but she can be fixed_. He just needed to know where she was - if these _malditos bastardos _had taken her.

He pinned the thought as he heard his tormentor – who had become distracted with what sounded like an intense phone call of him telling someone to _‘get here now’ _– making his way back to where Lance floats.

“You,” he points a webbed finger under Lances nose, “are such a squirmy little brat. I would’ve thought more of a Paladin of Voltron.” He looks up and down Lance’s black suit with a strangely charged gaze.

“Well,” Lance starts, summoning as much confidence as possible, “clearly you know who I am, so you mind telling me why the fuck I’m tied up at the bottom of the ocean instead of completing my actual mission?”

His captor just smiles, cruel and twisted, showing his set of sharp teeth and borderline psychotic gaze.

“What a stupid little Paladin you are. So slow, isn’t he,” he shifts slightly and Lance can see passed his shoulder that a second figure is approaching quickly from the entrance behind him, “Captain?”

_The Captain_, he recalls, _the stuffy pink head of the Royal Guard_. He had been the one giving the orders about where Lance needed to find the opposing tribe. And Lance had…walked right into the trap.

_Idiota estúpido_.

“You never had a mission in the first place,” his captor says menacingly, still close to Lance’s face, whispering it in his ear as if it were a secret. “We’ve got you here, because we’re going to sell you.”

_Ay dios mio._

* * *

Keith finds himself on the observation deck, seeking solace in its memories and the stars that seemed to coddle him there.

He left the recreation room shortly after Shiro had promised they would figure out what really happened. As much as he wanted to stay and help, he was already feeling about as strung out as he could be. He needed to quiet his mind before he would be anywhere near useful.

He sits down by the window, the cold of the room seeping into his skin. He’s numb.

The door opens.

“Hey man.” It’s Hunk. He invites himself to sit next to Keith, his eyes sympathetic. “I’m not going to ask stupid questions like ‘how are you’, but you’ve been awfully quiet since we…saw him. I just want you to know you can talk to me.”

It’s a nice gesture, it really is, but Keith knows that once he starts speaking, he’ll start crying and once he does that, he doesn’t think he’ll stop. He can’t let himself fall apart just yet, not when he still has to catch whoever did this. Make them pay.

“I know. I just can’t. Not right now.” _Not ever._

Hunk sighs, resigned. He stares out at the expanse of stars in front of them. Moments tick by in a silence that feels slightly heavy to Keith. Like he’s supposed to say more, like he should at least talk to Hunk. They were all suffering, yet he was still trying to reach out. Still trying to keep it together and keep them all from falling apart.

_Lance would want them to support each other_, Keith thought, _he wouldn’t want them to deal with this themselves_. And he was, pushing them all away. Isolating himself. Forcing them all to deal with everything themselves because he still, after all this time, couldn’t just talk to people,_trust_people. He was…exhausted. _I bet they are all exhausted too_, he thinks.

His shoulders are tense when he finally breaks, bones feeling brittle as he uncurls himself and slowly looks towards Hunk. “I just…I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know either,” Hunk admits, taking Keith’s small opening and running with it. “I always thought losing someone you love would be like, walking around in a haze y’know. Feeling like it’s too awful to be true. Expecting them to still be…here, somewhere.” He stops to even out his ragged breathing. “But this,” he gestures to nothing, “this is so much worse. I know he’s not coming back. It’s all I can think about, it’s all I can see. I can’t even picture him without that slit on his”- he cuts himself off with a sob, hand coming up to stifle himself.

And now Keith is really at a loss. He feels himself well up, reminded exactly of how he’s been suffering for what feels like a lifetime now – walking around with ghosts on his back. It feels too much suddenly, reminding himself that Lance is now part of the list of names that will forever be dragged along in the dark corners of his mind. He sees it in Hunk’s tears, grief feeling unfamiliar to him; raw and unbearable. It opens the stitches of Keith’s carefully patched up walls and he can do nothing else but cry with him.

It’s enough to pull Hunk out of his own spiral long enough to offer Keith a hand, a small gesture of comradery in this awful battle they find themselves in. Keith goes in for a hug instead.

They sob under the stardust.

…..

Hours pass.

“Do you love him?”

“I thought you weren’t going to ask stupid questions”

“True.” Hunk chuckles a bit, but it sounds dry and mirthless. “Did you ever tell him?”

“No, I thought I’d have…time.”

“I know you did.”

“And I was a coward. I wanted to tell him. I was going to.”

“I know you were.”

“But there never seemed to be a good moment, we were so wrapped up in new leads to Zarkon and the coalition and,” his voice cracks, “distress beacons.”

“I know.”

“And I thought that there would be time because I…I would always have his back…to make sure he… to be there to…” _to save him_.

But he can’t confess how he feels he had let everything fall apart. The weight of it feeling too heavy on his chest to explain how much he blamed himself, knowing he should have been there. He should have stopped this_, god, _why did he let him _go._

He has to work hard to steady his breathing again. Hunk clasps his shoulder to steady him.

“Y’know for as much as he is…was…a gushy idiot who loved nothing more than big romantic gestures. What he really wanted was just to feel,” he searched for the right word, “wanted. For the life of me I don’t know why he didn’t ever feel like he was enough, but Keith, these last few months… I’d never seen him more content. Which is saying something since we’re at war.” His smile is painful to look at, as it hangs crooked on his face. “Something in him switched. I think he could finally see how much he was worth, you showed him how much he was loved. Even if you didn’t tell him. He knew.”

It’s supposed to make him feel better. But all Keith can picture is Lance’s face when he eventually did.

Eye’s half-lidded.

Looking right at him yet seeing nothing at all.

Dead

_(Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.)_

Keith takes no comfort in Hunks words; he couldn’t speculate on the past.

He had to find _answers_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Hope you all enjoyed chapter 2! Let me know if you did, the feedback so far has been so wonderful to have - thank you to everyone who took the time to comment. I enjoyed writing this chapter, and taking the plot a bit further. Everything will be revealed in the final instalment!
> 
> If you figured out which song this is named after, give it a listen! If not, I'll leave it till the 3rd chapter - as it fits much better with the finale. 
> 
> Until next time.
> 
> \- Rae

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm Rae, new to the writing community, but very excited about uploading my first Voltron fic.
> 
> Chapter One down, hopefully you enjoyed it. The plot will pick up more in the next instalment, I'm thinking of making this into 3 parts. Lots more arguing, blaming and maybe even a flashback to happier times... 
> 
> See you in the next one!


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